"alizine" Ink

[TimeoDanaos]

Hi all, later today I'm picking up an old unopened bottle of Danish produced iron gall ink from the factory Rønning & Gjerløff in Copenhagen. The ink is advertised under the name "Alizin", which according to the label cleans the pen as you write, and the ink is supposed to be easy-flowing. A google search reveals that "alizine" apparently has something to do with veterinary medicine nowadays. Does anyone have a clue as to what this ink additive might be and do? Thanks in advance!

[BaronWulfraed]

Closest I've found is https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6682055/ where it is likely a color-change pH indicator. cf: alizarine yellow which is a yellow dye below pH 10

[TimeoDanaos]

Closest I've found is https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6682055/ where it is likely a color-change pH indicator. cf: alizarine yellow which is a yellow dye below pH 10

Thank you! It would seem likely to be connected to that kind of dye, although there's no hint of yellow or red apart from perhaps a faint purplish hue in the blue component, like a proper royal blue. On the side of the bottle it says "iron gall aniline ink" - the colour is a standard old-fashioned blue black with lots of ferrotannic acid and a remarkably strong smell of Solv-X mixed in with the acidic smell.

[txomsy]

Interesting. I'll try to see if I can find out anything. You sure you have the name correct?

[TimeoDanaos]

Interesting. I'll try to see if I can find out anything. You sure you have the name correct?

Here's a snapshot of the bottle. Sorry about the quality of photography!

"Rønning's

Alizin

Self-cleaning easy-flowing

Fountain pen ink"

Edited January 23, 2020 by TimeoDanaos

[txomsy]

https://arkiv.dk/vis/4771710

 

Seems to be an old formulation from at least the 40's-60's. There are numerous other bottles of Rønnings fyldepenneblæk without reference to Alizin (that I can see), so it seems that most likely it was just the trade name for one of their ink formulations, possibly without any connection to the ink components. From the dates, I suppose it started as a Quink lookalike (with all due caveats), or maybe it was the other way around, hence the smell, and with a specially designed bottle to avoid leaking when pouring.

 

Not being a Danish speaker myself, I cannot tell if the "Alizin" name may bear specific word-play connotations (like Quink).

 

Other than that I cannot find any similarly named compound in most compound databases, other than the oestrogen which would have been a very weird substance to add to ink in those times.

[TimeoDanaos]

Not being a Danish speaker myself, I cannot tell if the "Alizin" name may bear specific word-play connotations (like Quink).

I as a native Danish speaker can say pretty safely that it doesn't sound like anything, except vaguely science-like. It makes little sense to me that they would come up with a gibberish science-sounding name instead of something both cool, understandable, and science-sounding like Solv-X... Anyway, except for the smell, the ink is really nice. A purplish sort of royal blue that turns black pretty quickly on the paper.

 

I'll produce a writing sample tomorrow, just for the sake of reference for future generations.

[BaronWulfraed]

I'll still favor that it is an alizarin compound -- and they just shortened the name for trademark purposes.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alizarin

 

The madder dyestuff is combined with a dye mordant. According to which mordant used, the resulting color may be anywhere from pink through purple to dark brown

 

Ah ... and even better https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alizarine_ink

 

Alizarine ink was created in 1855 by Professor Leonhardi of Dresden, Germany, by adding alizarin dye (derived from the root of the madder plant) to conventional iron gall ink. This added an attractive coloration to the ink, which was quite popular until it was replaced by more modern chemical inks.^[1]

 

An 1881 recipe for Alizarine ink may be found in the Household Cyclopedia of General Information.

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20030626162022/http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/tech/printing/fortycenturiesofink/chap13.html

 

Professor Leonhardi, of Dresden, who had given much attention to the subject of inks, introduced in 1855 what he termed a NEW ink, and named it "alizarine ink," alizarin being a product obtained from the madder root, which he employed for "added" color in a tanno-gallate of iron solution. It possessed some merit due to its fluidity, and for a time was quite popular, but gradually gave place to the so-called chemical writing fluids; it is now obsolete.

Emphasis: It possessed some merit due to its fluidity,

 

Note that the Wikipedia article gives 1868 for when alizarin was synthesized, and also that alizarin was superseded by quinacridone in 1958.

[TimeoDanaos]

I'll still favor that it is an alizarin compound -- and they just shortened the name for trademark purposes.

You must be correct. Your first post about alizarin being a yellow dye just threw me off. Thanks for your detective work!

I have seen bottles from the same manufacturer with the name Kaolin - not fountain pen ink - which must be their trade name for kaolinite. It makes sense for a chemical factory to adorn their products with a trade name of a major component.

As far as I know, Rønning produced all sorts of chemical products, but they mainly produced ink, probably limited to the Danish market, perhaps also for the other Scandinavian countries.

 

Edit:added a sample taken with flash of text written yesterday and a bit of freshly laid ink next to it. This closeup captures the purplish tone to the blue-black well.

Edited January 24, 2020 by TimeoDanaos

[BaronWulfraed]

You must be correct. Your first post about alizarin being a yellow dye just threw me off. Thanks for your detective work!

 

Well, that just was the earlier chain -- finding that document where "alizin" was mentioned with other pH color-change indicators, which then lead to "alizarine yellow".

 

It was the later day when I did a bare search on "alizarin" (with/without the e) that brought up the reddish hue versions -- and those led to the ink references.